Install VMware Tools on Debian

During installation the kernel headers and a C compiler will be required, to check which kernel you are using type this command:

# uname -r
2.6.18-5-686

# apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.18-5-686
# apt-get install make gcc

Now that the required packages are installed follow these steps to install the vmware tools:

1. click install vmware tools from the vmware server console menu
2. mkdir /mnt/cdrom
3. mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom
4. cd /tmp
5. tar zxf /mnt/cdrom/VMwareTools-1.0.3-44356.tar.gz
6. cd vmware-tools-distrib
7. ./vmware-install.pl
8. accept the default paths and choose to run the vmware-config-tools.pl at the end

The VMware tools have now been installed.

Inject VMWare NIC driver into Windows Server 2008 boot image

This guide only works on WS 2008 or Vista. The WAIK is supported on WS 2003 and XP too, but the driver injection will fail.
You can download the WAIK here.

Install the WAIK, open the Windows PE Tools Command Prompt. Also, have the WS 2008 boot.wim ready, and mount the VMWare Tools image by clicking "Install VMWare Tools", this will mount the drivers on the cd-rom drive.
If you are not doing these steps on a virtual machine, you can also just download these drivers (vmxnet).

1. copype x86 c:\windowspe
2. imagex /info "c:\path\to\x86\boot.wim"
In the WIM Information, look for the Boot Index, in this case the boot index is 2. We will use this in the next step.

3. imagex /mountrw "c:\path\to\x86\boot.wim" 2 c:\windowspe\mount
4. peimg /inf="c:\path\to\vmxnet\win2k\vmxnet.inf" c:\windowspe\mount\windows
5. peimg /inf="c:\path\to\vmxnet\win2k\vmware-nic.inf" c:\windowspe\mount\windows
You should see "PEIMG completed the operation successfully". If you would do this on a XP or 2003 machine, the message would be "PEIMG failed to complete the operation with status code 0x800703fb".
It's possible that this WILL work in future versions, but at the moment it doesn't

6. imagex /unmount c:\windowspe\mount /commit

The boot.wim image has now been injected with the VMWare NIC drivers.

There is an alternative to this, instead of doing the above driver injection procedure, you can add this to your .vmx file to have network support too: ethernet0.VirtualDev="e1000"

Install VMWare Tools on Server Core

In VMware Server Console, click "Install VMware Tools".
The setup GUI will not automaticly appear, so you have to run it manually. Actually by clicking on "install vmware tools" the cd-rom drive was mounted with tools, so you can now type "D:", and then run setup.exe.
This will run the setup GUI and you can install the tools like you would normally.